


Still hurting

by Goldmund



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Grief, M/M, Sadness, old hannibal, old will, silver foxes, thinking about the past, weltschmerz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23842759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmund/pseuds/Goldmund
Summary: Hannibal and Will are old and visiting a graveyard. Will is sad. No warnings. just a bit of rusty English writing exercise. There was this prompt someone gave me a while ago. It was a quote from Goethe's Faust: “He calls it reason, using it To be more beast than ever beast was yet.”
Relationships: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, hannigram
Kudos: 15





	Still hurting

„Hannibal?“  
Will’s voice cut through the heavy silence of the graveyard grounds. His wet glasses prevented him from seeing anything, but huge rain drops that made their way down the surface of his spectacles. Will’s soaked hair stuck to his forehead and trickled down his grey-haired temples. He had forgotten to put on his beanie, probably left it in Hannibal’s car. The good doctor was nowhere to be seen. The ex-profiler felt the dampness of his clothes like a heavy cloak that pulled him down while his trousers stuck uncomfortably to his legs.  
“Hannibal!”  
Was it insensitive or even indecent to call out for someone in a graveyard? He turned to each side and looked around, but couldn’t see any other person, which wasn’t really surprising, considering the heavy shower that was coming down on them.  
He looked back down to the small stone just in front of his feet. It was for the very first time he laid eyes on her grave. So many years had passed by. He still remembered her well - her piercing blue eyes, the way they had stared at him, fully aware of his crime, the crime of killing her biological father. Back then she already had expressed her suspicions about his intentions, long before he himself had become aware of his wish to become a surrogate father.  
He read her name, whispering it to himself like a secret. It was hard to read since time hadn’t been kind to the engraved letters on greyish stone. It felt to him like visiting the resting place of a child – his child. She was gone forever, long before her time. He still blamed himself instead of Hannibal. >>You could have had it all. It would have been so easy<< They could have been a family. Hannibal had told him so, right after Will’s monstrous betrayal. He had been a shitty friend. Will had to smile. He was bitter. Hannibal had been an even shittier friend and foster father. He shook his head. It was of no consequence any longer. All these losses! All this death! He had hoped Hannibal would let Alana live, but no. The wrath of the murderous Titan hadn’t stopped after their fall.  
When Will had been in a coma for five months he had dreamed of fish and ocean and the taste of salty water and a quiet, an somniferous silence that had swallowed all the noise in his head and replaced it with everlasting peace. But it didn’t last. One day he had opened his eyes to the world again – saved and sadly still alive – only to learn that Hannibal had been hunting down the people as he had promised to do so – in another lifetime.  
They hadn’t even cared to give Abigail’s gravestone a short quote or simply a Bible verse, but who would have wanted that beside her parents and her two foster dads?  
Now, in retrospective, her death seemed completely meaningless to Will. He had sacrificed her like the proverbial lamb for slaughter in order to secure his moral integrity and his former believe of never being one of those who would ever become corrupted by evil and who would never be tempted by demons. Pathetic!  
He hadn’t wanted to become Hannibal’s Doctor Faustus. So he had refused Mephistopheles’ offer, but still Gretchen had to die. Not quite an innocent Gretchen, but a girl that did not deserve such gruesome death. A fair and proper trial would have been enough, yes, even a life imprisonment with some help of a professional and kind psychologist (not Hannibal), but to cut her throat as a punishment for William’s non-compliance...killed by the same man who had saved and had nurtured her dreams of a better future. It felt like one of the old mythological stories of the Greeks. And Will’s part in it was something he could not forgive himself, ever. Especially not now that he was Mephistopheles’ mate and had followed the devil all the way down to the abyss. Hell, how good and great it had felt to be truly evil, to be finally free of the heavy conscience of a good man. But it had lasted only for a while. He had struggled with it for quite some time. Time and again, he had longed to put a stop to it. To all of it. He had fantasized about suicide for years, but eventually he had given up. Now he was quite contempt with his existence. He wouldn’t call it living. They were an item, never to be separated again.  
Goddammit! He was back on his merry-go-round of thoughts. A place he had visited too many fucking times over the last twenty or so years.  
“Not a very fruitful exercise.” Hannibal’s smooth voice narrated from behind him.  
“You’re wet as a poodle. You’ll become sick again.” The older man added.  
“I never quite caught the meaning. I mean why a poodle? Why not a spitz or a cocker spaniel?”  
Will turned around. Hannibal was holding a large black umbrella in his left hand and a walking can in the other. It wasn’t just any wooden can, but crested with a silver knob in the shape of a stag head. Naturally. Hannibal’s white hair was not wet at all. In fact, he looked as neat as a pin. His three-piece-suit in dark blue was without blemish.  
“Where have you been?” Will asked. “I found her.”  
“I was aware of that. I thought you’d like to have some privacy.”  
Will mumbles incomprehensibly.  
“Beg your pardon?”  
Hannibal stood two feet away, not even looking down at the grave stone.  
Will sighed. “I don’t believe in any concept of the afterlife. You know that. So I’m not in the habit of talking to ghosts. She is not here anymore. You saw to that.” He clenched his jaw.  
“I did indeed.” Hannibal replied. Will could not trace any remorse in Hannibal’s voice.  
“I did not leave you to have soliloquy with a ghost, but to grieve in privacy.” Hannibal explained himself. He rarely did these days.  
They walked back to their Jaguar. Will walked with a limp. He was used to it. The rain had worsened.  
“I was wondering if we could make a donation? Anonymously?”  
Hannibal opened the car door on the passenger seat for Will. The younger man lowered himself in a cumbersome manner into the vehicle.  
“Yes, of course.”  
“I want to buy a proper gravestone for her. Abigail needs something more personal.”  
“I understand.” Hannibal nodded and closed the car door before he walked over to the driver’s seat.  
“Do you?” Will mumbled.  
Hannibal let it slight.  
When Hannibal had taken his seat behind the wheel Will asked: “Would you know about any proper epigraph?”  
“We’ll think of something.”  
Hannibal started the car’s engine and pulled out of the parking space. Will looked out of the window, leaning his head against the cool glass. Why did it still hurt so much? The lump in his throat was back. He wanted to cry, tears stung in his eyes, threading to force their way down his scared cheek.  
Hannibal pursed his lips.  
Will knew his companion was watching him.  
“Let’s leave. I’m cold and I wanna go home.”

The End


End file.
